


Street Smarts

by ameliacareful



Series: Strangers and Brothers [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angry Dean, Dean at 14 in a children's shelter, Episode: s01e10 Asylum, Gen, Hunter Sam, Not Dean's Kid or Dean's Problem, One Shot, Pregnant Teen, Realistic Depiction of Child Social Services
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 07:22:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4737674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliacareful/pseuds/ameliacareful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean are sent to a haunted Asylum to investigate deaths there.  When Dean is attacked by the ghost of the head of psychiatry, memories of his early days in the foster care system are stirred up and his helplessness and fear from that time turned into rage aimed at Sam.  Based on Season 1, Episode 10 Asylum.</p><p>AU where John and Dean fought when Dean was 14 and John threw Dean out.  Sam was raised a hunter.  Dean became a firefighter.  The first piece in the series is called By Fingertips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Street Smarts

*     *      *

2005

 

            Dean couldn’t believe they were checking out a haunted asylum. His life had been reduced to some sort of movie cliché. A pretty cool movie cliché, actually. OSHA should have been all over this place. It was hazardous workplace on steroids. He galloped down the stairs into the basement.

            “Sam?” he said. Sam had called and he’d left a very pretty blond high school girl armed with a shotgun upstairs with was many types of hot (and sadly, one important type of wrong but damn, years worth of fantasy material, right?) “Sam?”

            He moved through the hallway and pulled open a door marked ‘boiler’. His spidey senses were more than tingling—something was wrong. Sam washurt or he would have called out by now.   He found a funky room that looked like it was out of The Woman Without a Body, all medical lab equipment with dirty plastic hanging in doorways. His flashlight flickered and cold, dry hands grabbed his face. Something crackled through him.

            “Don’t be afraid, I’m going to make you all better.”

 

1993

            Dean was fourteen. He was in Colorado. He had been trying to get to North Dakota, to Bobby Singer’s place, but hitchhiking took him out of his way and there he was, in Boulder, when Child Protective Services picked him up the first time. The truck driver had ratted him out. He wasn’t going to give his dad’s contact info and get Sammy taken, too.

            Bobby Singer had been a bad idea anyway, Dean wasn’t even sure what he’d say if Dean showed up on his doorstep. Sitting in the office of a social worker named Irene Espinoza, he’d decided the best thing to do was to get back to Virginia and convince his dad he was sorry. He’d studied the ugly beige carpet while she was on the phone to the New Faith Transitional Housing for Juveniles. Her desk was metal. It was covered in manila file folders. She had black hair pulled back in a pony tail and she wore two inch high heels and her feet looked swollen. She was impossible to charm but not mean.

            She drove an old Subaru station wagon. When they got to New Faith it was after eleven at night. The place looked kind of like a nursing home only not as big. There was a parking lot and an entrance with double glass doors. She pulled one open and followed him into the overlit entrance room that smelled like Pinesol cleaner. A tall light-skinned black guy, big as John Winchester but wearing a minister’s collar and softer, stood and said hello. There was a desk kind of like a hotel check in and a plastic potted plant and shiny white floors.

            Dean was given a single room ‘because he was expected to be placed soon.’ He carried his sheets and pillow case and towels. The room was the size of a closet with a twin bed and a side table. The light was bleak. The window was locked.

 

            Two days later he waited outside the double doors with three other kids for the van to take him to high school. He was ‘enrolled in an alternative high school until placement in a foster situation’. There was a weird way everyone spoke that was full of phrases like that, that everyone but him understood. There were two girls. One was a pregnant Puerto Rican girl called Fabiola. She was sharp and pretty and wicked smart and Dean knew enough to be afraid of her.  She was about five feet tall and about five months pregnant. She was seventeen. There were two black guys, one called Royston and the other one Dean didn’t know. Royston had a little beatbox and he was playing something on it that was mostly the same thing over and over again. The other guy was rhyming to it, like rap music, quiet, so it was hard for Dean to hear. He was trying no to stand to close. Royston was nodding with the music. Royston was eighteen, about to ‘age out of the system’. Dean couldn’t tell yet if this was a good or a bad thing.

            “That’s sweet,” he said.

            The other guy looked like he might be part Mexican or something. He stopped rhyming and nodded his head for a moment. “You made that, man?”

            “Yeah,” Royston said, “62 bars.”

            “Nigger. Tha’s big.”

            Dean wanted to wince. People calling people ‘nigger’ made him nervous. He knew black kids did it but still.

            The van pulled up and there were already some kids in it. Royston and the other guy shoved into the empty back seat. The seats behind the driver were already full.

            That left the middle. There was a kid already sitting next to the window. He had burn scars twisting ropey and pink against his dark skin, leaving half his head hairless, down his cheek and neck and disappearing into his jacket. He was a mouth open. There was a seat open next to Royston and the other kid but they had sunk down, knees splayed, looking at him like he was road kill.

            He could fight but he really didn’t want to. Just wanted to get away from this place and back on the road as soon as possible.

            “Get in, moron,” Fabiola said. “I gotta sit near the door.”

            Dean got in next to the burn kid who stared at him a minute.

            Fabiola climbed in next to him and Royston stood up leaned over and hauled the door shut.

            The van lurched forward.

            Fabiola smiled at Dean. “You’re pretty, white boy. My boyfriend sees you, he’s not gonna like you at all.”

            Dean shrugged.

            “He’s _Eme_ ,” she said. “You know what that means?”

            Dean shook his head. Don’t start anything, just go along.

            “Mexican Mafia. And I’m his baby mama.” Fabiola stuck her tongue out at Dean and wiggled it. The tip was pierced with a little silver ball. “He looooves me.”

            Royston and the other guy went, “Wooooooooo,” and the other guy sang out, “Fresh meat, girl!”

            Dean turned his face to the front.

            The boy with the burns stuck his hand down his pants and started wanking off, mouth open, breathing loud.

            Fabiola and the everybody in the van except the driver started snickering. The driver just drove as if he was deaf.

            Dean wished it was a haunting. Something he understood.

            Day two in social services. He got into his first fight that night and spent five nights on lock down.

 

2005

            He found himself standing in the basement hallway of a haunted asylum with his head in the past, full of acronyms and jargon he hadn’t thought about in years. _At-Risk. Children’s Services Board. WIC._ _Everyday Routines, Activities and Places. Home Visit_. He felt very still and weirdly powerful, like something was coiled within him. Like he could put his fist through a wall.

            Sam came down the stairs and said, “Dean!”

            He couldn’t quite bring himself to speak, just wanted to stand there, all coiled and ready.

            Sam did that annoying thing where he flipped his hair out of his eyes and startled when he saw Dean is right there. “Dean! You all right?”

            “Yeah, Sammy,” he said. “I’m fine.”

            Sam looked at him carefully. “You know it wasn't me who called your cell, right?”

            “Yeah, I know. Something lured me down here.”

            “I think I know who. Dr. Ellicott.” Sam ran his hand through his hair. Sammy-boy was all hair tonight. “That's what the spirits have been trying to tell us. You haven't seen him, have you?”

           “No,” Dean lied, just to see what Sam was going to say. “How do you know it was him?”

           “Because I found his log book.” Sam loved to have all the facts. Loved to be in control. At least for once he was sharing with Dean. “Apparently he was experimenting on his patients, awful stuff. It’s like Tuskegee never happened.” And he loved to sound smart, talk about stuff people didn’t know about just so they felt stupid.

           “But it was the patients who rioted.”

           Yeah. They were rioting against Dr. Ellicott. Dr. Feelgood was working on some sort of, like, extreme rage therapy. He thought that if he could get his patients to vent their anger then they would be cured of it. Instead it only made them worse and worse and angrier and angrier. So I'm thinking, what if his spirit is doing the same thing? Making them so angry they become homicidal.... Come on, we got to find his bones and torch them.”

 _Yeah Sam. Lets do that. Fuck, Sam. You’re the mighty hunter_ , Dean thought. _Don’t ask my opinion. Hell, you hated hunting. Maybe me, the guy who liked it, might have noticed something, but don’t bother to ask. It’s all about Sam._

            He followed his brother. Sam searched for a secret room, a room that had been easy to find a little while ago but was now gone. Sam found it though. Of course.

            “There’s a draft,” Sam said, fingers searching. “There’s a door.”

            “Good job, Colombo,” Dean said.

            Sam looked up and straightened slowly. “Dean, your nose is bleeding.”

            Dean laughed. All that feeling, all that rage was uncoiling inside him. “You proud of yourself, Sam? I already found it. But you never bothered to ask, did you.”

            “Put the gun down,” Sam said gently.

            Dean hadn’t even realized he’d aim the shotgun at Sam. “I’m sure you’ve got a reason for that. Something you haven’t bothered to explain.”

            “Nope,” Sam said. “I’d just rather you didn’t shoot me.”

            “Because I’m getting tired of playing guess why Sam wants to do something,” Dean said. “Or wonder if Sam’s going to even talk to me today.”

            “Ellicott got to you,” Sam said.

            “Why don’t you just guess,” Dean said.

            “Are you going to shoot me?” Sam asked. “The gun is filled with rock salt. It’s not going to kill me.”

            Dean grinned and pulled the trigger. The shell caught Sam smack in the middle of his broad chest from six feet away, and knocked him backwards through the flimsy hidden door and onto the floor, pretty hair flying.

            “No,” Dean said, “But it will hurt like hell.”

            It was weirdly pleasing to see Sam laid out, stunned for a moment. Then he was getting his elbows underneath him trying to get his breath. A chest full of rock salt was not insignificant. Like getting kicked really hard.

            “You think it’s been so bad for you,” Dean said. “Poor Sam. Left all alone with _a parent_. _Who cared_. You got any idea what it’s like in the real world?”

            “We’ve got to salt and burn the bones,” Sam said.

            “Pregnant kids having kids. Kids living on the street. You got no idea what it was like without dad. You cry to me about how awful it was.”

            “This isn’t you, Dean.”

            “You may not like what he taught you but he gave a rat’s ass! It wasn’t somebody taking in five kids for the foster care checks! It wasn’t lying to social workers during home visits!”

            “Why’d you come with me if you hate me?” Sam asked, still on the ground looking up at him.

            “Fuck if I know,” Dean said. “Maybe because I knew you would never have survived what I did. And look at you. You were the one who hated hunting. You were the one who wanted to get away. You’re stomping around looking like every other alcoholic anti-social hunting s.o.b. Dad ever crossed paths with. You can’t even get a life. And I let you drag me into yours. It should have been _you_ Dad threw out.”

            Sam laughed tiredly. “Okay.” He pulled his 9mm, holding it by the barrel and held it out.

            Something in the back of Deans head was saying in a tiny voice, nonononono but the pearl handled Taurus was so beautiful, so tempting.

            “I don’t think I’m up for another blast of rock salt,” Sam said. “Take it.”

            Dean felt as if he was watching another person reach out and take the gun.

            “Can you kill me,” Sam asked.   “You’ve got the gun. You hate me that much?” His eyes narrowed and his voice sharpened to a goad. “Then go ahead.” In a hiss, “Pull the trigger, Dean!”

            Almost involuntarily, Dean did.

            The gun clicked. Dry fire.

            Dean frowned, tried again.

            Click.

            Sam came up, lethally fast, and slugged him, knocking him sideways. Then he was on him with zip ties for wrists and ankles. “It’s okay, Dean,” he said.

            “FUCK YOU,” Dean spits at his brother.

            “You don’t think I was really going to give you a loaded gun, do you?” Sam said. He stood for a moment, looking down, and his expression was flat, shuttered. He might as well have been wearing sunglasses again for all that was available in his expression. He had his fingertips gently touching his chest which was bleeding from rock salt. Then Sam turned to search for the bones.

            Dean lay on his side, hands behind him, ankles bound, seething. He smelled lighter fluid, then heard a struggle and something clattered, and then the whoosh and the smell of burning.

            It was all over. The rage drained like water.

            Then the realization hit.

 

            Sam must have lifted the keys to the Impala from Dean’s jacket when he was cutting the zip ties because after they had finished, he pointed Dean to the passenger door. It was coming on dawn, the first pink just touching the horizon.

            “Sam,” Dean said.

            “You want coffee? Or you want to sleep first?” Sam asked. He walked around to the driver’s side.

            “I didn’t mean it,” Dean said.

            “I know,” Sam said. He didn’t move like he had a chest full of rock salt, at least not until he leaned down to adjust the seat back. Then Dean was secretly pleased to see him wince.

            “Let me drive.”

            “Let it back on that side,” Sam said. The bitch about bench seats. Both sides had to be adjusted.

            Dean knew what Sam was thinking. The rage had to work with something. Something pre-existing.

            “Why did you do that with the 9mm?” Dean asked.

            Sam looked at him.

            “Was it a test?” Dean asked. Had Sam figured he was going to get caught by Ellicott? Used this to try to figure out Dean?

            Sam looked at him like he was nuts. “No,” he said. “I emptied the gun and left the clip upstairs because that way if Ellicott got to me, at least I couldn’t shoot you.”

            Dean thought to himself that it was a good sign that he felt embarrassed. Still, it was pretty clear that the barricades were back up with Sam. He hoped they weren’t back at square one.

            Sam started the Impala. “Sometimes you’re an asshole, Dean. Coffee or sleep?”

Fin.


End file.
